To Support a Schools Chancellor, Mayor Demands Budget Control

By DAVID FIRESTONE

Published: September 12, 1995

In a sweeping bid for power that roiled the search for a schools chancellor, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said last night that he has decided to support only those candidates who agree that City Hall should control the budget of the school system and school safety.

Already, one leading candidate who refused to meet the conditions has withdrawn under mayoral pressure. Mr. Giuliani confirmed last night that he had met privately with three other candidates.

Deputy Mayor Peter Powers said the Mayor had met privately with the first candidate last month and then told an intermediary that he "was not pleased with the position that the individual was taking."

According to those familiar with the search process, the candidate was Dr. Bernard R. Gifford, a former deputy chancellor who was the first choice of Carol Gresser, the president of the Board of Education. In a letter to the Mayor written shortly after the meeting, Dr. Gifford agreed that City Hall should have more control over the school system, but would not agree to hand over complete control of the budget and the school safety division. He wrote that he would not serve without the Mayor's strong support.

The assertion of broad new demands by Mr. Giuliani set up an immediate and seemingly intractable confrontation with Ms. Gresser, who said any candidate who agrees to the Mayor's conditions would be unacceptable to her. She said the candidate rejected by the Mayor was her first choice to be chancellor, and though she did not confirm it was Mr. Gifford, she said the candidate had already withdrawn because of the demands.

She accused the Mayor of conducting "secretive and underhanded" interviews with candidates that undermined the role of the board and the selection process.

"I want something understood from the outset: the new chancellor will not be chosen in a back room of City Hall through some shadow selection process," Ms. Gresser said in a statement. "Only the members of the board can offer a candidate the post of chancellor, and they will do so through the selection process publicly discussed at board meetings. The Mayor is not in a position to offer this job to anyone, with conditions or without them."

Although the Mayor has no direct role in the selection of a chancellor, he is capable through rhetoric and political pressure of making a chancellor's life miserable. Many government and political officials have said that the resignation earlier this year of Chancellor Ramon C. Cortines was the direct result of a series of insults and belittling criticism from Mr. Giuliani.

Ms. Gresser said the Mayor's latest demands -- which she said included giving City Hall control over individual line items in the school budget -- demonstrate that he is interested only in political control, not the substance of education.

But speaking to reporters outside Gracie Mansion last night, Mr. Giuliani said it was absurd and silly for Ms. Gresser to suggest that he could not meet independently with candidates for chancellor.

"Carol Gresser is not going to stop me from talking to people about being chancellor," he said. "So she might as well take her silly remarks and do something else with them."

In his meetings with the four candidates, he said, he has told them of his desire for the city to control school budgets and safety, and has had a series of discussions "beyond Carol Gresser's ability to carry on a substantive discussion."

Mr. Giuliani has repeatedly said that he wants control of school safety, and expects an incoming chancellor to agree with that position. But control over individual items in the school budget is a dramatically new demand, one that would remove the single most important source of power from the chancellor and the school board.

With a line-item veto, for example, the Mayor could essentially dismiss individuals or entire divisions by eliminating their funding, and could redirect money from one program to another just as he does over the city agencies he now controls.

Currently, the Mayor and the City Council have only the power to determine the overall size of the $7.3 billion school budget, not how it is spent. School officials have said that only an act of the State Legislature could change that relationship, and lawmakers in Albany have shown no inclination to grant the Mayor's request for such control.

Ms. Gresser said that her candidate had met with Mr. Giuliani at Gracie Mansion on Aug. 14, two days before the Mayor sat down with the Board of Education at City Hall to discuss the terms of the chancellor search. At no point did Mr. Giuliani ever mention to the board his meeting with the candidate or the conditions he was demanding, she said.

"When we met with him, he hardly dicussed the subject at all," she said. "It is incomprehensible that he should choose this cloak-and-dagger course instead of working with us in an aboveboard, honorable fashion. We are trying to choose a chancellor, not conduct a grand jury session."

In his Aug. 25 letter to the Mayor, Dr. Gifford thanked him for the Aug. 14 meeting and said the Mayor was right to seek more control and accountability over the school system. Because the people of the city hold the Mayor responsible for educational performance, Dr. Gifford wrote, the time had come "to close the gap between mayoral accountability and mayoral authority."

But Dr. Gifford -- a chancellor finalist in 1989 and 1993 who went on to form his own software company in California -- said he could not agree to the line-item control of the school budget that Mr. Giuliani said he wanted.

"It is hard to imagine that any experienced manager would agree to take the helm of the school system under those conditions," he wrote. "A key element in any chief executive's job is establishing priorities and allocating resources to transform those priorities into realities. No executive can be an agent of change if his or her every decision is subject to second guessing."

Similarly, Dr. Gifford wrote that he agreed that the Police Department should play a much larger role in school safety. The department should assist in training school safety officers and in deploying them, he wrote, and the safety director should be jointly appointed by the chancellor and the police commissioner. But he wrote that school safety should remain under civilian control in order to preserve its close ties to community groups, and to prevent educators from deciding to "wash their hands" of the safety issue.

Ms. Gresser said her candidate had tried to compromise with Mr. Giuliani, but was rebuffed after declining to endorse each of the Mayor's demands.

"Although my candidate reached out in support of the Mayor's views, his failure to swear fealty to every little detail of the Mayor's demands rendered him, I believe, unacceptable to City Hall," she said. "I wonder whether the other candidates put forward by the Mayor have been similarly vetted. I wonder whether, unlike my candidate, they have agreed to subordinate their professionalism to political loyalty to the Mayor."

She said the Mayor had used a political intermediary to persuade the candidate to withdraw when he would not agree to the conditions. Mr. Powers said the Mayor did not ask anyone to drop out, but rather told an intermediary of the candidate's choosing that the Mayor was unhappy with the candidate's position.

He also had high praise for Claire Shulman, the borough president of Queens, who confirmed a story in Newsday on Sunday that the Mayor had asked whether she was interested in becoming chancellor. Although she said she was not, Mr. Powers said she would do an excellent job.

"Claire Shulman could do about any job in this city, she's so terrific," Mr. Powers said.